About the Author

Ivar Ekeland is president of the Université Paris-Dauphine and founder of the Centre de recherche de mathématiques de la décision. Ekeland's other books include Mathematics and the Unexpected, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Reviews

In this book, Ekeland confronts some of the questions faced by people who must use probability and statistical theory. He begins each section with a tale drawn from Norse legends, the Bible, or other sources and segues into mathematics. Starting with the problem of generating ``random'' numbers by nonrandom procedures, Ekeland then poses the philosophical question, ``Is there really such a thing as chance or is it simply a manifestation of our own ignorance?'' He later looks into the underlying ideas behind many branches of mathematics that deal with chance: information theory, game theory, chaos, statistics, evaluation of risk, even probabilistic number theory. The book's technical content is quite limited, frustrating the reader who would like to see more detailed examples. Nevertheless, these metaphysical musings by a knowledgeable probabilist make intriguing reading.-- Harold D. Shane, Baruch Coll., CUNY

This elegantly written essay is a subtle philosophical meditation on the role of chance, risk, fate and uncertainty in mathematics, physics, nature and our daily lives. Modern civilization ``moves forward without measuring the risks incurred, and without thinking globally,'' warns Ekeland ( Mathematics and the Unexplained ), president of the Universite Paris-Dauphine. Stressing that chance is an inescapable, fundamental part of the universe, he examines its workings in subatomic physics, card playing, weather prediction, at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island, in chaos theory, statistics and information theory. Leavening his occasionally technical presentation with literary examples ranging from Norse sagas to Rabelais, Isaac Asimov and Jorge Luis Borges, Ekeland concludes that every decision-making problem has a moral dimension--and the more important the decision, the larger this dimension. Illustrated. (Oct.)